Original Post

Time Traveler Broken Into the Future Corrupts Entire Saved Game

So, after I ask the time traveler to hangout he disappears. It looks like he teleports somewhere? Also, I'm not sure if this will happen, again, but last time I kept going to into the future and eventually my game became corrupt and parts of the game started to disappear like the information panel at the bottom and things like that. It might be connected to why my characters can't hangout with time traveler, but I'm not sure why the game became corrupted like that. It literally breaks the game and I don't know what's causing it?

Re: Time Traveler Broken Into the Future Corrupts Entire Saved Game

@Ephendrielle For travel transition issues, the best combination is NRaas ErrorTrap, Overwatch, and Traveler. These three will work in the background to repair glitches and low level corruption without your having to do anything. MasterController is also useful for its ability to manually reset sims (it's much more thorough than the cheats console option, which only resets a sim's location and clears the action queue). You can also ask questions directly on the NRaas website—its mods are still actively supported by the developer and site admins.

Be sure to get the appropriate version of ErrorTrap for your patch level; there are different ones for Origin/1.69, Steam/1.67, and disc/1.67 (or mac). The other mods will all work equally well on both patch levels.

If you've never used mods, the easiest way to start is to download the Mod the Sims mods framework, unzip it, place it in your Sims 3 game folder in Documents, and delete the five cache files inside the game folder. (These are CASPartCache, compositorCache, scriptCache, simCompositorCache, and socialCache.) Once you've confirmed that the two sample mods work, you can keep or delete them as you prefer, then add the NRaas mods you want—they'll all go in Packages. Be sure to delete the cache files any time you add or remove a mod from your game folder.

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I don't work for EA. I'm just trying to help fellow players with their games.

Re: Time Traveler Broken Into the Future Corrupts Entire Saved Game

@Ephendrielle Emit is special kind of role sim, maybe not even a full sim, and can't be treated like one. I'm not sure exctly where the line is, but for example, trying to add him to an active household will probably corrupt your game. Just asking him to hang out is much less problematic, of course, but still might not work as it does for other sims.

The glitches you've described sound like they may be the effects of a broken travel transition, although there are of course many other ways to bork a save file. The transition is fragile and breaks easily; the game can lose sim data or even fail to load the sims themselves in the destination world. Without mods, the only thing you can do is try to lower the stress on the game engine each time you travel and hope for the best. And examine your game after each supposedly successful transition; if you find an error, quit without saving and try again.

I'm sorry there isn't a better answer, but the travel function is one of those features that was never properly fixed by EA. Many of us still playing gave up on the standard version a long time ago and now use mods to prevent errors, or at least greatly decrease their chance of happening.

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I don't work for EA. I'm just trying to help fellow players with their games.

Re: Time Traveler Broken Into the Future Corrupts Entire Saved Game

Would you be so kind as to refer me to your preferred Sim Mods applications? I mean, what ones should I download, especially for this problem? I just tried uninstalling and reinstalling Into The Future, and Emit still disappears after being asked to hang out. -_-

Re: Time Traveler Broken Into the Future Corrupts Entire Saved Game

@Ephendrielle For travel transition issues, the best combination is NRaas ErrorTrap, Overwatch, and Traveler. These three will work in the background to repair glitches and low level corruption without your having to do anything. MasterController is also useful for its ability to manually reset sims (it's much more thorough than the cheats console option, which only resets a sim's location and clears the action queue). You can also ask questions directly on the NRaas website—its mods are still actively supported by the developer and site admins.

Be sure to get the appropriate version of ErrorTrap for your patch level; there are different ones for Origin/1.69, Steam/1.67, and disc/1.67 (or mac). The other mods will all work equally well on both patch levels.

If you've never used mods, the easiest way to start is to download the Mod the Sims mods framework, unzip it, place it in your Sims 3 game folder in Documents, and delete the five cache files inside the game folder. (These are CASPartCache, compositorCache, scriptCache, simCompositorCache, and socialCache.) Once you've confirmed that the two sample mods work, you can keep or delete them as you prefer, then add the NRaas mods you want—they'll all go in Packages. Be sure to delete the cache files any time you add or remove a mod from your game folder.

——————————————————————————————————————————

I don't work for EA. I'm just trying to help fellow players with their games.

Re: Time Traveler Broken Into the Future Corrupts Entire Saved Game

Just wanted to say thanks. I use to think installing mods was too hard, but this wiki helped explain it in a way that even I was able to understand. Now I feel silly, because it's clearly not that hard lol. I'm so glad I figured this out finally! I have a souped-up computer built for gaming and nvidia graphics card, but my sims 3 is often met with glitches that have me restarting my game. My goal is to create a world that last for days and days of gameplay with lots of diverse families having generations and all their stories intertwined. Not that I'll never face problems, again, but with your help I'm now one step closer to that dream world. BIG THANKS

Re: Time Traveler Broken Into the Future Corrupts Entire Saved Game

@Ephendrielle I'm so glad you're figuring out how to use mods. I started using them myself when my games kept glitching out and becoming completely unplayable, and I've never looked back. If you ever have specific questions about NRaas mods, you can also ask on the website—the current developer and admins still support the mods.

Since you have a gaming computer (and a gaming graphics card, from the sound of it), you may need to take steps to limit your in-game frame rates. Unlike most newer games, TS3 doesn't have its own fps limiter, and a strong card can generate high enough rates to damage itself from overwork over time. More immediately, you might see weird screen glitches, although that doesn't always happen. To check your in-game frames per second, open the cheats console (crtl-shift-c) and enter "fps on" without quotes. A number will appear in the upper right corner of the screen, and it should never go above the refresh rate of your monitor. ("fps off" makes the number go away.)

To cap fps, you'll need to use an outside tool. For Nvidia cards, the first choice is is the built-in Control Panel, but it doesn't always work (and never works in windowed mode). The next tool to try would be Nvidia Inspector (free download). With Inspector, you'd need to explicitly set the fps limit to the refresh rate of your monitor, which is normally 60 Hz. You can find screenshots of the setups for both tools in this post, under the spoilers: